Since last March, the PlayStation 3 has been one of the
leading contributing technologies to the Folding@home effort.

Now, less than a year since
release, more than one million users have taken part in Stanford
University's Folding@home project. According to Sony, this equates to roughly
3,000 PS3 users registering for Folding@home per day or 2 new registered users
every minute worldwide.

"Since partnering with SCEI, we have seen our research
capabilities increase by leaps and bounds through the continued participation
of Folding@home users," said Vijay Pande, Associate Professor of Chemistry
at Stanford University and Folding@home project lead."Now we have over one million PS3 users
registered for Folding@home, allowing us to address questions previously
considered impossible to tackle computationally, with the goal of finding cures
to some of the world's most life-threatening diseases.We are grateful for the extraordinary
worldwide participation by PS3 and PC users around the globe."

According to the Folding@home team, a network of roughly
10,000 PS3s can accomplish the same amount of work as a network of 100,000 PCs.
It took just six months after PS3 joining Folding@home for the project to surpass
a petaflops, a computing milestone that had never been reached before by a distributed
computing network. On September 16, 2007, Folding@home was recognized
by Guinness World Records as the world's most powerful distributed
computing network.

Currently PS3 users make up approximately 74 percent of the
total teraflop computing power of the Folding@home project.

The Folding@home program runs simulations in protein folding
and misfolding, helping scientists understand – and hopefully curing – diseases
such as Alzheimer's, Huntington's, Parkinson's and certain forms of cancer.
That’s not all the PS3’s CPU is able to do for the medical community, though,
as the Cell Broadband Engine is also helping
doctors at Mayo Clinic with medical imaging.

Comments

Threshold

Username

Password

remember me

This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

If you have PS3 system version 1.6 or later, you will see a Folding@home icon in the Network column of the XMB (PS3 menu). Just click on the icon and that's it. If you don't have 1.6 or later, please perform a system upgrade.

The figure is probably how many have tried it (clicked the icon) rather than use it regularly.

more would be running PS3 Folding@home if thay Tell the users that there is an auto start option on the FAH icon (green button/options) some may asume it runs in the back ground, alot may have changed the there names as well so it may not say, name PS3 /team 0 as mine does not

thay may be getting the numbers of compleated work units as the servers that give out the work units can count each uniqe ID for each PS3, even if thay chaged the name

allso turn off the music if you been haveing problems with it hanging the PS3 as it can crash FAH and you have to turn off the PS3

quote: Perhaps they didn't feel like helping people and would rather pwn some noobs on Warhawk?

maybe people use their PS3 for gaming and when they stop gaming they turn the machine off... to save power. When running F@H the PS3 consumes more than 200W continuously, do you also leave all the lights in your house on 24/7?

Of course not, you turn OFF your lights when you leave it, as you should turn OFF your PS3 when you stop using it. You're wasting tons of resources and losing money keeping F@H running.

To give and idea I live in a 1 bedroom apartment roughly 800 sqf and my electric bill is about $1600 a year and that covers heating, hot water and all my toys. Fortunately the place is well isolated so I use little power on heat and in fact most of the time my Stereo and IT stuff supply enough heat (which is then wasted in the summer).

quote: Of course not, you turn OFF your lights when you leave it, as you should turn OFF your PS3 when you stop using it. You're wasting tons of resources and losing money keeping F@H running.

Well - the main question here is if helping the scientist find a cure for diseases is a waste? I can think of much worse ways to spend energy - say how about not using the dryer to dry you clothes but hang it outside to dry instead for starters (It's better for most the clothes too).

Also for me my heating is electric so if I heat my home with electric radiators or a PS3 running 24/7 makes no difference. Except the PS3 will most likely not outlive the radiator so if I have to replace it some day there is the cost of making the thing. However most likely when the PS3 is done chances are I will be done with as well having moved on to a PS4 or something.

"We are going to continue to work with them to make sure they understand the reality of the Internet. A lot of these people don't have Ph.Ds, and they don't have a degree in computer science." -- RIM co-CEO Michael Lazaridis